


The Harbour in Blue

by spiderlilies



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bantering, Bickering, F/F, Fluff, Nassau is home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7718194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderlilies/pseuds/spiderlilies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After acquiring the brothel, Max decides to give the establishment a much needed makeover with the help of her less than enthusiastic girlfriends, Eleanor and Anne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Harbour in Blue

**Author's Note:**

> I had a couple people ask for more Ithaca universe femslash stuff, so I decided to post this one-shot, which is technically pre-Ithaca, but I hope you enjoy it anyways~! And it is also 100% standalone, so no need to read Ithaca.
> 
> p.s. I love painting and it keeps making it into my fics. Oops.

The wall before the three women was plastered with god-awful, peeling wallpaper that was primarily the color of green bile with little swirls of piss-yellow accents, browning roots still clung to the surface from the wild vines that had been removed the day before, and the bamboo paneling had rotted against the base, which turned the wallpaper there nearly black. The disreputable nature of the whorehouse, no doubt, started with the horrid interior decorating and atrocious upkeep.

Max had been tasked with the daunting task of making the establishment more proper and respectable, as Lieutenant McGraw had requested of her. Normally, she wouldn't take kindly to being ordered about, but the Lieutenant had given her the means to elevate her station from that of a whore to the Madam, and that earned him privileges. By now, they had been trading favors back and forth so much during the rebuilding of Nassau that she could hardly say who owed who at this point. Plus, he was correct in saying that the brothel was in severe need of a makeover. After all, you could tell how cheap a whore was by how she painted herself.

This building would be painted as if it were a courtesan to the king. And, with the help of the best hands Max could find—her girlfriends, Eleanor and Anne—it would become as proper as an English brothel could be.

"Can't believe this shit ain't coming off. It's hanging here like it’d fall off on its own, but you pull it and it rips every fucking time," Anne complained for the nth time as she tossed a wad of the wallpaper into the wastebasket, which had a dozen or so other wads scattered around it at varying distances.

"Would you rather take this spatula and scrape off this fucking glue? Because your job is far easier than mine," Eleanor answered right back with a complaint of her own as she fought with a particularly stubborn bit of paste.

Perhaps they weren't the best hands Max could have gotten, but she had been enamored with the idea of the three of them recreating this place that had been a chainless prison to her for most of her life. With their help, it could become something else, something that no longer controlled her, but rather she had control over.

To make this place safe—emotionally and physically—was her goal.

" _Mes amours_ , this is the final wall. We are nearly done," Max encouraged, as she too helped remove paste, and silently agreed with Eleanor that this was the harder of the jobs.

"Nah, then we got painting to do,” Anne said. She pulled out a knife she always carried on her person and began using it to strip away another piece of the wallpaper, though it didn’t appear to make the task any easier. “It isn't nearly done."

Max rubbed sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The heat was clearly getting to them, making moods volatile and arguments easy. "If you both wish to go, then go. I can do this without you," she said in resignation, though the thought of having to work alone, in silence, was not appealing to her in the least.

As if sensing her disappointment, Eleanor reached out and brushed a curled strand of hair, that had fallen from Max's bun, out of her face. "I made time for you today. I'm not going to make you redecorate this place alone," she assured her with a gentle timbre.

" _Made time for her_ ," Anne repeated mockingly. "Max ain't a client, she's your girlfriend."

"I bloody well know she's not a client,” Eleanor shot back with a glare, “but some of us actually have important jobs here and can't sit around all day waiting for someone else to give us a task,” she said, touching on a sore spot that was likely to rile Anne up even more.

Max gave Eleanor a disapproving look, but Eleanor wasn't paying any attention to her anymore.

"Fuck you, Guthrie, you fired me," Anne reminded her.

With a sigh, Max set to scraping the paste again. She would have the whole place clean and painted before those two stopped arguing. At times it seemed that they could hardly stand each other, but Max had hoped they would put aside petty squabbles today at least.

"You cussed out an important trading partner because he checked the wrong box on a form," Eleanor repeated the same line from the last time they had had this exact argument. “Of course I fired you.”

"How was I supposed to know he was important? If he couldn't even read, he couldn't'a been that important," Anne said back, voice rising. “Been better if you fired _him_ for being a fucking id—”

A loud shout of pain from Anne cut off her sentence, and Eleanor moved even before Max looked to see what had happened. When she did look over at them, Eleanor was holding Anne's index finger, which had a gash running down its length and was seeping with blood, and Anne was scowling at her knife like it was at fault.

"Jesus, Anne," Eleanor said harshly, but concern was clear in the way she inspected the injury.

Jumping to action, Max took a cloth that she had tucked in her belt while cleaning the windows and brought it to Anne, holding it to the cut, and worrying over how deep the slice was.

"It's just a scratch," Anne said to calm them both, but still noticeably winced when Max wiped away the blood. The cut, thankfully, was quite shallow.

“You’re lucky you didn’t chop the whole thing off. Here I thought you were a talented knife-wielder," Eleanor said, going back to her ridicule after determining that Anne wasn't badly injured. Max could see the retort on Anne’s tongue, but Eleanor spoke first by adding flatly, "You should clean it.”

This time, Anne did not continue their verbal sparring, rather, she stared at Eleanor like she had lost her senses.

Hiding her smile, Max ducked away to grab a bit of water for disinfecting as Eleanor had suggested. Who knew what molds or other unsavory substances had gathered on these walls throughout the years. Clearly, Eleanor had been thinking that as well, and Max adored it when either Anne or Eleanor showed concern for each other, which was about as rare as finding an oyster with two black pearls nestled inside.

At Anne's prolonged stare, Eleanor let out an annoyed huff. "What?" she asked, sounding antagonistic once again.

"Since when do you care?" Anne asked in pure confusion. She focused on her finger then, avoiding the softer look Eleanor gave her in response.

"It's not like I want you to die from an infection," Eleanor said and returned to the work at hand. Work was always her method of avoidance. “Unfortunately, you’re important to Max,” she added, as if that was all the explanation needed to explain away her own momentary kindness.

Returning with a pewter pitcher of water, Max decided to play both mediator and interpreter for the both of them while she cleaned Anne’s wound. “What Eleanor means to say is that neither of us wish to see you hurt.”

Eleanor huffed again, but didn’t deny it, which was enough to make Max feel like progress could be made towards a less hostile air between her lovers. This relationship was still new and malleable, and most of the rivalry between the two stemmed from Eleanor feeling as if Anne had intruded on them, while Anne was often concerned about being the newcomer with less intimate history. Despite the tension between them, they had made much progress since their first encounter, which had ended with Eleanor reaching for her shotgun and Max stepping between the barrel and Anne. Their bickering bordered on friendly these days, though neither woman would admit to it, and that gave Max hope that, one day, perhaps, Anne and Eleanor could be friends.

“Don’t expect me to kiss it better,” Eleanor said to Anne, who continued to stare at her cut with a befuddled expression as water was poured over it.

In lieu of Eleanor’s words, Max pressed a kiss to the side of Anne’s finger. “Consider that a message from Elle,” she said with a bright smile, and followed that up with a brief kiss to Anne’s lips.

Anne flushed immediately and glanced at Eleanor, who quickly looked away and rolled her eyes at Max’s obvious ploy.

“ _That_ was certainly not a message from me,” Eleanor said, and Max couldn’t help but giggle.

Only once had she managed to initiate a threesome between them, and that had involved a great deal of rum, at an hour so late that everyone was giddy from lack of sleep, and the pure accident of Anne returning to retrieve her hat and walking in on her and Eleanor making out against the bar in Eleanor’s tavern. Honestly, thinking back on it, the only pleasure achieved that night might have been them collapsing in a heap onto Eleanor’s plush couch. It was a fuzzy memory. Fuzzy, but warm and wonderful.

When Eleanor saw that Max was giving her a playfully seductive lip bite, she grit out, “We’re supposed to be working, I’m sweating from every pore, and you two had better get back here and start helping me with this goddamn wall.”

 

Nearly an hour and a half later, Eleanor and Anne were bickering over where to place the potted ferns, and, by some miracle, there was no trace of piss wallpaper or yellow paste left on the wall. To break up the latest argument, Max loudly set down the two paint cans she had just carried in from the back room, and winced as she hoped she hadn’t cracked any of the newly polished tiles.

The moment Anne saw the cans, she set the pot on the edge of the corner table Eleanor had been decidedly against and asked, “What color you pick?”

This was another point of disagreement. Eleanor suggested again and again that a burgundy interior would add to the sensual appeal, while Anne was convinced that the original green should be kept because it clearly worked well for the place in the past, though Max suspected that Anne had no sense of what colors would befit the brothel and merely picked a color to argue against Eleanor’s choice. There might have even been bets involved over which color Max was going to settle on.

Max held out two large brushes and scooted one can with her foot. “ _Bleu,_ the shade of the sky,”she answered proudly. Anne and Eleanor shared a disappointed look. “It is a calming color, good for easing the tensions built up during the day.”

Eleanor moved the fern over to the floor beside the base of the stairs and then came to take a brush. “Sky blue for a brothel? Wouldn’t it be better to go for a passionate color? Like red.”

Behind Eleanor, Anne nodded in silent agreement, took the other brush, and gave it a twirl, though she nearly fumbled it as the weight was not the same as the knives she played with. She took a quick glance at Eleanor to make certain she hadn’t seen the second slip of the day.

Max forced her laughter down and focused on prying open the lids as she explained, “I do not wish to run this place as inconsiderately as Noonan and Mapleton did. Calm customers are better for the girls. Red also ignites anger and aggression—”

“That explains it,” Eleanor cut in, and took a bit of Anne’s auburn hair between her forefinger and thumb. “So much rage.”

Anne batted her hand away. “Thought you were saying red was passionate.”

For a moment, Eleanor didn’t appear to have a clever response, but then she shrugged. “Max prefers blue it seems,” she said while slipping off her jacket. By pure chance, Eleanor had worn a light blue shirt today. Even Anne gave her a look that said that was the pettiest retort yet.

“Are you two ready to put away your dicks and daggers?” Max asked with an amused smile, and put the paint can lids down on the burlap protected section of the floor.

In momentary truce, Eleanor removed unnecessary layers of clothing to avoid getting paint on them, and Anne parted with her longcoat and hat with a forlorn expression. Wordlessly, Max provided Anne with a hair tie to protect her hair from an unwanted recoloring courtesy of the blue paint.

“Look at that, you have two beautiful green eyes,” Eleanor said, somehow making it sound less like a compliment and more an insult, but it was effective nonetheless. Anne fussed with the ponytail and glared through the blush she was unable to hide behind a curtain of hair.

Then, the painting began. As soon as three wide lines of blue paint were on the wall, Max was certain she had made the right decision with her color choice. It was such a light feeling to see the old, almost depressing surface renewed with vibrance and good taste. Even the smell of the paint seemed to her as fresh as falling rain, washing away the old and ushering in the new.

“ _C’est magnifique,_ ” Max breathed out softly and drifted her eyes to Anne and Eleanor, who both shared a look that conceded neither burgundy nor bile-green would have been as lovely.

Soon, Eleanor entered business planning mode as she asked what color the flaking blue stairs and railings were going to be painted—white—, whether or not the tree would remain in the center of the main room—it would, after some much needed trimming—, and if the boa was going to be kept—Max hadn’t decided, but no one seemed to actually own the critter, and it hadn’t killed a man yet, so it would likely continue its residence.

“Got a name yet?” Anne asked from her spot up on the stepladder, where she stretched to reach the junction between the wall and the ceiling.

A sliver of exposed skin at Anne's hip caught Max’s eye, but she turned instead to look at the enormous, pale yellow snake that was curled around the tree limbs. “ _Non,_ snakes are not my ideal pets. You may name it if you like.”

“Not the snake. This place,” Anne indicated around the entire room with her brush, dripping paint onto the burlap and barely missing Eleanor’s leather boots. “Names are important for branding,” she added, which was certainly a line parroted from Jack Rackham.

Naming the establishment had not occurred to Max. The brothel was one of the most well-known buildings in Nassau, second only to Eleanor’s tavern and office complex, and, given that the business would remain off record, branding wasn’t exactly a necessity. Still, a name was appealing in a way; it could give the place character, a personality even, making it more than an inconsequential, nameless brothel. This place and Max herself were anything but inconsequential—they were instrumental.

“I have not thought of a name, but it should have one. We could paint it on the front, something welcoming and memorable,” she agreed. “Nothing too suggestive, or the Lieutenant will—”

A noise from Anne cut her off once again, but this time it was more in the realm of a shriek, and was certainly not from an injury. Eleanor wiggled two of her blue-tipped fingers playfully, and Anne held the hem of her shirt up a little higher, revealing two distinct fingerprints on her stomach. Anne scrunched up her eyebrows and looked entirely unsure of how to respond to this method of attack, which was quite possibly the most adorable look Max had seen on her.

“The fuck was that for?” she said eventually.

Eleanor slipped off her boots and tossed them to the growing pile of vetements on a nearby table. She wiggled her freed toes, which Anne watched with suspicion. “You nearly decorated my boots with your unwieldy paintbrush skills,” she answered and moved to dip her fingers into the can again. “This is a retaliation.”

The playful mood Eleanor was brewing infected Max just as much, and, when Eleanor gave her a discrete signal, Max took advantage of Anne’s distraction, pressed her palm against the wet paint on the wall, and made her own stealthy attack against Anne’s stomach. There was another surprised shriek and Anne jumped from the stepladder and stepped away from her attackers, while still holding up her shirt. The sky blue print of her palm on Anne’s pale stomach was a good look. Max grinned, her tongue teased between her teeth. Anne scowled. Eleanor laughed.

The three of them were darting around the ground floor of the brothel in no time, ducking behind chairs and tables, and using smears of paint to indicate their losses, though no one was truly keeping score. Streak after streak, coated fingertips brushed arms, temples, and toes. Their laughter, warm and light, bubbled from corner to corner, until they were breathless and once again at the unfinished wall.

Eleanor collapsed to the ground first, spontaneous and uninhibited by the usual load of work she had on her mind. Feeling the exhaustion catch up to her as adrenaline left her, Max sunk down next to Eleanor, and, as the sight of Eleanor sprawled out with a heaving chest was too much to let pass her by, Max gave her a long, deep kiss. When she withdrew, she slid her finger down Eleanor’s lip to her chin, leaving one last blue mark behind. Then, because Anne was still standing, Max tugged her down onto the floor between them.

They stayed like that, on the cool tiles, listening to each other’s breathing in companionable silence. This was how a place, once disreputable and cruel to its workers, could heal. With tender, loving hands, sky blue walls, and moments such as these.

“The harbour,” Eleanor said softly, as she painted a sailboat onto Anne’s side without a hint of protest from her. Max hummed for clarification and Eleanor gave her an easy smile. “Shortly after we met, you said that love was a harbour in the storm of the world. A welcoming, memorable name for this place, _The Harbour._ ”

“ _The Harbour,_ ” Anne mumbled, half asleep from Eleanor’s gentle touches.

“ _The Harbour_ ,” Max repeated, feeling it settle in her heart and her mind like the name of a dear friend or a compassionate lover. Joyously, she kissed her hands and tossed the kiss into the ceiling as a greeting to the christened place. “ _The Harbour_ it will be.”


End file.
